I can't blame the trailer. It's well made. It shows you that you're going to be on an island fighting zombies. It's grossly unrepresentative of what you actually are going to be doing (Hint: It's not vacationing with your white middle class family). Then again, so are most trailers that don't show gameplay.

No the reason this trailer ruined zombies for me is that it highlighted exactly what was wrong with the zombie genre - it's hard to tell a heartfelt story in a zombie infested world.

Zombie games, and zombie movies are essentially disaster movies at heart. Zombies are an act of God. For the most part they have no intelligence. They exist to kill you the same as the ice age that cameth in Emmerich's The Day After Tomorrow. They have no emotion, they have no pathos. They can't be made glamorous like vampires or other monsters that can assume a human like guise.

In short - there's only so much you can do with them.

For a while it was fun. 28 days later was an intelligent take on zombies. Yes, "the real monsters are us!" trope was employed but it was a fresh take on the genre that had previously been relegated to B movies and "of the dead" films. Even the follow up 28 weeks later was a fun, if slightly less brainy, slightly more rough around the edges romp.

In terms of games, Left 4 Dead was a miracle. With only spoken dialogue and a catchy trailer courtesy of Elbow, the game sold you on it's characters. In a time when most FPS were turning to competitive military shooters, L4D was a breath of fresh air.

But through it all a trend appeared. Zombies as an enemy are highly limited. We've hit saturation. It'd be if Roland Emmerich only made a series of films that all involved an impending Ice Age. The Day After The Day After Tomorrow. Two Weeks Later From The Day After Tomorrow.

So while I see that lately there has been a trend to humanize and give zombies intelligence, it's very difficult with such ugly character design. So, let's give it a rest. No more Dead Island. No more Left 4 Dead. Hang it up. Let's get a little creative. How about.........Balrogs. There's not enough Balrogs in games.